WVU gymnastics coach Jason Butts did something pretty interesting before the team’s road meet Saturday, and then saw his team respond with a handful of excellent individual performances on the way to a strong team score and a second-place finish (and that counts as a 2-1 record for the day).

“We struggled in warm-ups today, and we had to adjust our lineups accordingly,” said Mountaineer coach Jason Butts. “I told this team they could come out and be competitive, or they could fold, and they knocked it out of the park.”

With today’s score, the Mountaineers (6-5-1, 0-0-1) have now earned consecutive scores of 195.0 or better on the road for the first time since 2013.

“This is another road meet that we didn’t count a fall, and that’s big for this team,” explained Butts. “I’m proud of the way the squad is stepping up. They’re all doing a great job in practice, and it’s showing in these road meets.”

I’m not certain what Butts did, not merely because I don’t follow it all that closely, but also because lineups can change a bunch as a coach tries to find six competitors for five high scores on an apparatus, and this season isn’t yet long enough to spot definitive patterns. Still, here are the lineups from the first five meets and here’s what the Mountaineers did at New Hampshire. Lots of variation there, but big rewards, too.

You are now free to apply this logic to the basketball team, purely at your own risk. Bob Huggins said he’s had to ask players who can shoot to shoot more and players who can’t shoot to shoot less, that he’s bewildered by bigs dribbling and not finishing near the basket and by the rise in turnovers and the drop in intensity, but he also followed Saturday’s loss be revealing he saw this coming and his team has been trending this direction with bad practices for weeks now (8:30 mark).